Saturday, November 10, 2012

Why Delhi is submerged in deadly smog

For the past week, residents have been driving to work through a
"pea-souper" - thick fog which has hung menacingly over Delhi and its
neighbourhood. The city has looked like a smoggy dystopia. The people of Delhi are mourning
the death of the sun. Although the sun made a welcome appearance on Friday, some media reports say
the smog is far from defeated and may return during the weekend.
People's eyes hurt and water when they step out, and they have complained about nagging headaches. Most are wheezing, sniffing and coughing. The papers are
full of stories of clinics overrun by patients suffering from respiratory
ailments.

Winter smogs are not uncommon in Delhi, but this year has
been rather extreme, sending air pollution
levels way above permissible limits. Independent environment group say that rising pollution is to blame. Researchers belonging to the watchdog Centre for Science and Environment
(CSE) say Delhi's air quality has
deteriorated sharply - particulate matter in the air has risen by 47%
between 2000 and 2011, while nitrogen dioxide levels has leapt by 57%. Delhi, they say, is a gas chamber: its air contains a lethal cocktail of
poisonous gases like nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, and benzene.

The government appears to be rather blase about it all, blaming the weather
(slow wind speeds, low temperatures and high humidity) and curiously, even
hinting at conspiracy by neighbouring states
"It is as if it is deliberately being done to choke Delhi," Chief Minister
Sheila Dikshit told a newspaper.
CSE Executive Director Anumita Roychowdhury, in charge of its air pollution
and transportation programme, warns that government's response could have
disastrous consequences.
"Unfortunately, despite the scary hard facts about the elevated cocktail of
pollution and health risks, the problem is being dismissed as a mere weather
phenomenon," she said.
"In other parts of the world, governments issue warnings and take pollution
emergency measures during such severe pollution episodes to protect public
health. But we are doing nothing."

She is right. So what has gone so awfully wrong with Delhi's air. Researchers believe that the unfettered growth in the number of vehicles,
especially ones driven on diesel, is a key reason.
Delhi alone adds over 1,000 new vehicles every day, half of them
diesel-fuelled. The capital has over 6.5 million vehicles, which is more than
the total number of vehicles in the cities of Mumbai, Chennai (Madras) and
Calcutta.

A thriving suburbia, including areas like Gurgaon, Noida and Faridabad, has
meant that over a million vehicles - 70% of them cars - enter and exit Delhi
every day. The new vehicles are better, the fuel is cleaner, but their sheer numbers do
not do any good to the city's air.

It is not rocket science to conclude that Delhi needs to ramp up its public
transport and cut down on private pollution-carrying vehicles. To be fair, the city has come a long way in improving public transport: the
quality of its passenger bus fleet is among the best in India, and an impressive
metro railway now links most parts
of the city.

But environmental groups like CSE say this is simply not enough. "Delhi is taking too long to scale up its public transport," says Ms
Roychowdhury. Some 6,000 passenger buses run in the city - but the government itself admits
it needs nearly three times that number to cater for peak passenger traffic. The
city is bereft of pavements and footpaths, betraying a skewed planning ideology
which favours cars over cycles and pedestrians.

Environmentalists also recommend higher parking charges for cars and a
crackdown on unauthorised parking to force more car owners to use public
transport - parking spaces, by one estimate, gobble up to 10% of Delhi's land,
and daily additions of new cars creates demand for parking space that is bigger
than 300 football fields every year.

Although cars are the mode of transport for only 14% of travel trips in the
city, parking fills up disproportionately large spaces. Environmentalists also suggest a hike in diesel prices, an upgrade emission
standards, the introduction of buses for commuting to and from the suburbs and
the imposition of congestion charges.